Did Benjamin Franklin Invent Daylight Saving Time?

An anonymous reader writes "While living in Paris, Ben Franklin was struck by how many hours of daylight were being wasted to sleep during the summer months. He wrote an open letter to a Parisian journal lamenting the wasted expenditures on candlewax, and presented his back-of-the-quillpad estimates of the cost savings if the entire population arose an hour or two earlier. However, Franklin did not specifically mention moving the clocks ahead; instead, he suggested official means for enforcement (rationing the sale of candlewax to families) and encouragement (ringing church bells at sunrise). The clock-shifting technique which we know and love was credited to the New Zealander George Vernon Hudson, who proposed it in 1895. DST was first widely adopted by warring countries during World War I as a way of conserving coal needed for military purposes. This launched a debate over DST's usefulness that continues to the present day (particularly by people stumbling about in their bathrooms). Of course, Franklin is also associated with other questionable ideas, including bifocals, lightning rods, electric current flowing from the positive to negative terminal, leaking official documents to fan opposition, and an independent United States of America." New research suggests the daylight saving time change will lead to lower productivity tomorrow as the lost sleep makes workers more likely to slack (PDF).

Ah, Ben Franklin

[mykepredko]

One of my childhood heroes - I'm not surprised that he would have questioned the custom of keeping the same hours throughout the year as the sun rises and sets at different times.

My favourite story about him: Thomas Jefferson would not allow Franklin to work on the Declaration of Independence because he feared Franklin would put too many jokes in it.

myke

Re:CGP Grey

[Jamu]

No it doesn't. BST is always GMT + 1.

Do we have to actually 'abolish' it?

[coldmist]

No.

My wife hates DST, so she looked into the actual law.

Here it is: The federal US government sets the days that the DST transition happens on. It's up to the individual states to go on DST or not.

So, you could work at a state level to just have your state not participate in it.

That's it.

Re:Ben Franklin was wrong?

[aXis100]

He didnt get it wrong - "Electric Current" is an arbitary definition.

The fact that it does not match up with the most typical case - electrons - is only an inconvenience. There are other circumstances where the flow of charge matches the direction of electric current, such as with positive ions in an electrolyte, so either way you're going to have issues.

Re:I don't really agree with Ben here.

[BeefMcHuge]

I assume your joking but just in case. Hemp and Marijuana are not the same plant. They come from the same species of plant but you cant smoke hemp to get high. It only contains minute amounts of the psychoactive drug, not enough for any physical or psychological effects. The US was a huge producer of hemp before it was outlawed. It can be used to make clothes/paper/plastic/ and just about anything else you can think of. It is still illegal in the US to grow "industrial" hemp because people and the government are to fucking stupid and scream "think of the children" every time even though it is not a drug.